Business Law

August 21, 2013Comments Off on Insurance – No homeowners’ coverage for nonresident of insured household

An insurer owed no coverage to a man who allowed a friend to host a party at his father’s house and was sued after a partygoer crashed his car and his passenger was injured. The man was not a resident ...

August 21, 2013Comments Off on Consumer Law – Plaintiff can amend credit reporting act complaint against bank

In light of additional evidence obtained through discovery, plaintiff can amend her complaint, which currently does not state a claim against a bank for alleged violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Facts and procedure Plaintiff alleges that defendant ...

August 21, 2013Comments Off on Business Law – Individual or corporate liability on loan is disputed issue

In this action to collect a debt allegedly owed by a corporate defendant, a material dispute whether the loan was made to defendant’s president in a personal capacity precludes summary judgment for plaintiff. Overview Plaintiff’s now-deceased son-in-law, Brian Dalby, ...

In this copyright ownership dispute, the district court correctly admitted hearsay evidence of a conversation between the song’s writer and his son but incorrectly excluded two trade-publication articles that had some bearing on the ownership dispute. A family affair ...

August 16, 2013Comments Off on Consumer Law – Plaintiffs did not plead plausible inference of national original bias

The federal district court correctly dismissed plaintiffs’ claim that a bank violated the Equal Credit Opportunity Act by not letting them refinance a loan because of their Iraqi heritage. Plaintiffs did not plead facts that would permit a plausible inference ...

August 14, 2013Comments Off on Taxation – Use and storage of boat in Michigan makes owners liable for use tax

Petitioners are liable for use tax, penalties and interest because they did not overcome the presumption that a yacht they brought into the state within 90 days of purchase was intended to be used in Michigan. Petitioners are Laughing Dolphin ...

The parties negotiated a written settlement of this law suit through counsel’s email exchanges. Defendants’ argument that there was no binding agreement regarding all proposed terms of the settlement is not well-taken. “The crux of the parties’ dispute in this ...

August 13, 2013Comments Off on Insurance – Bankruptcy did not affect lien on debt’s life insurance policy

Even though a bank participated in the deceased debtor’s bankruptcy, this did not extinguish a lien arising from the deceased’s pre-petition assignment of his life insurance policy to the bank as collateral for a loan. The bank’s lien trumps the ...

August 13, 2013Comments Off on Consumer Law – Debt collector improperly added interest to charge-off accounts

Where a debt collector added interest to charge-off accounts purchased from lenders for the period between the charge-off dates and the dates the debt collector sued the debtors, this violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. This is so because ...